


Dose

by sachspanner



Series: 7-Day Challenge #2 [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Community: dailyfics, Drug Use, Gen, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 18:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1867956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sachspanner/pseuds/sachspanner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for LJ's dailyfics comm, under the prompt "Poison". The story of how Sherlock Holmes, conulting detective, came to be consulted- through a religious understanding of dose and dependency.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dose

Toxicology: it was all a matter of dose.

Poison, really then, is a bit of a weasel word. Chocolate is dangerous if you eat enough of it. Water can be deadly in the right dose.

So, when Mycroft said Sherlock was poisoning himself, it was really just semantics.

Everything Sherlock did had a purpose; he wasn't like most of London, walking around in circles waiting for something to happen to them. Sherlock needed data. He went out and got it.

It didn’t take long to find contacts who could supply him with what he needed. Initially, medical grade morphine. Later -because it wasn't his intention to become an addict; developing tolerance would ruin the data- the purest Colombian cocaine he could find. He injected, naturally, as it left less room for error, and he'd never been the kind to be squeamish about needles.

He was careful about track marks too. He'd practiced injecting fruit. Though live animal tissue might have been better, he admitted it was probably wise to draw the line somewhere. Once confident of his technique, he moved to his arm, thoroughly disinfecting the area before applying a gel anaesthetic to prevent flinching.

Everything objective was recorded, everything subjective deleted.

Irritatingly, Mycroft was no fool. He noticed the subtle change in the way Sherlock rolled his sleeves to cover up what little bruising remained in the week or so following a measurement. He'd called up an old acquaintance, an insufferable police detective, to keep watch on him.

The Detective Inspector tried to humour him, to give him some cases, some scraps from the table. But it could never be enough. Not while he was still bored, and the data still incomplete.

Although he pretended it was not out of defiance, he continued to run the experiments. Mycroft, in reply, stopped DI Lestrade from sending him cases. It was petty, and Sherlock resented it.

Yet, one addiction outweighed the other, and the morphine, the notebooks, the clean syringes, were all consigned to a shoebox. He retained it because- why destroy perfectly good research?

He hung about crime scenes knowing Lestrade would invite him to cross the cordon; later, increasing in confidence, he waited at home for the DI to arrive, and plead with him to help.

Perhaps he couldn't break free of Mycroft's strictures entirely, but if there was one thing his research had taught him it was that, after a time, people become dependent. The DI might have been in Mycroft's pocket to begin with, but he was now utterly dependent on Sherlock.

Dose was important.


End file.
